Miami Homebrewing - Idiot Sauvin

My second time brewing at Daddy Brews was a little dysfunctional. I had picked up a shift on Sunday, which I didn't usually work. Sundays were typically slow days for the shop, so this particular day, I decided to brew at work. Turns out, it was a lot busier than I had anticipated. This basically meant that I wasn't able to give the beer the attention it deserved, causing a few issues. 

The recipe was pretty simple. I wanted to use mostly Nelson Sauvin hops towards the end of the boil to let it shine and really show off its unique flavor. I also added a small amount of white wheat malt to help with head retention. I wanted to keep the malt backbone fairly heavy since the hopping was pretty aggressive for an American Pale Ale, so both the gravity and IBUs are on the upper end of the spectrum for the style.

Idiot Sauvin

--------------------------

Batch Size (fermenter): 3.50 gal   

Estimated OG: 1.057 SG

Estimated Color: 7.4 SRM

Estimated IBU: 43.7 IBUs

Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Grain:

------------    

68.2 % - 7 lbs 8.0 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)      

13.6% - 1 lbs 8.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM)       

13.6% - 1 lbs 8.0 oz Munich Malt (9.0 SRM)    

4.5% - 8.0 oz White Wheat Malt (2.4 SRM)

Hops:

------------ 

0.25 oz Magnum [Pellet, 13.50 %] @ 60.0 min (11.0 IBUs)    

0.75 oz Nelson Sauvin [Pellet, 11.40 %] @ 20.0 min (16.9 IBUs)     

0.75 oz Nelson Sauvin [Pellet, 11.40 %] @ 10.0 min (10.1 IBUs)  

0.75 oz Nelson Sauvin [Pellet, 11.40 %] @ 5.0 min (5.6 IBUs)      

0.75 oz Nelson Sauvin [Pellet, 11.40 %] @ 0.0 min (0.0 IBUs)      

Yeast:

------------ 

California 

Like the previous brew, mashing in the 5 gallon cooler didn't go as planned. The cooler absorb more heat from the water than I had anticipated, and once again, we were under our mash temperature target. We were sitting at 142F and added enough water to bring the temperature to 147F. We ended up leaving it there, because I kept getting distracted with helping customers. This of course led to us having terrible efficiency. (See stressed-out me, during the mash, below.)

After our problematic brew day, we finally ended with about 3.5 gal. into the fermentor. The OG came out to be 1.055.

The worst part about this whole beer, was that I didn't even get to try the finished product. I brewed this when I put in my two weeks at work. I got to try it after a week in primary fermentation. We took a gravity reading and it ended up being about 1.017. It was still a little sweet so we ended up transferring it to a secondary fermentor with the intent to cold crash it later in the week, due to all the hop particulate still in the beer. My last day of work occurred before the beer was finished and the beer ended up going to a beer festival (I'm not sure which one). It was gone before I had the opportunity to try it.

I'm hoping I get the opportunity to brew this beer again. I had high hopes for the beer but between the hectic brew day, and not even trying the finished product, I feel like I can't even count this as a completed brew.